Act IV - Progressing the Design
Entry posted by AliMcLeod
1971 views
It’s September 2015. We had our plot, we had approved planning permission, we had a builder who was about to start a build in the plot next door to ours and who had provided a build estimate that fitted with our budget. What could possibly go wrong?
18 months later, and I’m still not sure I can adequately answer that.
On the positive front, the 120 year old Farmhouse we’d put on the market a few months earlier had sold for a price we were very happy with. We were less enamoured with the local estate agent who tried to get us to accept a lowball offer put in by a chancer. And I was (and still am) frustrated that I gave in to SWMBO and went that commission based estate agent rather than one of the fixed fee ones. I am more than happy to pay professionals for their skill and expertise, but am still adamant this estate agent did virtually nothing to accommodate the sale. They could not even get simple things like the wording on the house schedule correct – it took 15 revisions before it could be signed off, with room names, room sizes, distances to nearest amenities etc all wrong multiple times.
We moved out of that house and into our temporary home at the start of October 2015. We’d only be there for 8-10 months and in our new home by Christmas 2016 (© Every home renovation show ever broadcast) or so the builder told us. We were excited and looking forward to life by the sea (ok, Life by the Firth).
But the next few months were frustrating. Looking back, we didn’t really know what we were letting ourselves in for. The main problem was making progress with the detailed design. We first approached the architect who did the planning drawings, and had a couple of meetings with them, but then they were completely unresponsive (in our experience, a running theme with many so-called professionals in the building industry). Even getting a quotation for the warrant work provided impossible, so we eventually gave up on that and asked our builder for a recommendation.
Our builder recommended a design agency they had used previously, stating that since we had approved plans, we did not really require an architect and all we needed was someone to take the plans and create the technical drawings to take forward for our building warrant. We decided to go down that route in the middle of December 2015 and arranged a meeting for January 2016.
It's said that you get what you pay for, and that proved to be the case here. Whilst the design agency were technically competent, and they did what was asked of them - they took the plans and created warrant drawings from them – there was absolutely no feeling that they were in any way invested in making the design as good as it could possibly be. They were not designing a home, they were creating some lines on a computer screen.
A perfect example of that was highlighted when we identified a couple of very basic flaws with the approved plans, yet the design agency did not notice those until they had been pointed out to them. I'm sure many here will spot the issues:
It was my own inquisitiveness that meant I spotted the issue before we got to timber kit design stage. Other than the initial marketing images, we did not have a 3D model of the house, and with two roofs resulting in a fairly complicated join in our master en-suite, I wanted to visualise how that room would work so started creating my own 3D model. You can see that roof join in this picture:
I had drawings with room sizes, but wanted room heights, so I asked for section views and eventually got the below.
However, even at this point, the design agency did not seem to comprehend that there was an issue with the two en-suites on that floor. One of them only had 1.6 meters (around 5 foot 3 inches) headroom in front of the toilet! The agency sent this through with a "as requested" response, not the expected "oh, I see what you mean, that headroom is not enough" comment.
Nor did they notice that the roofline at the rear of the building meant that you could not walk around Bedroom 3 with a double-bed placed as shown on the plan!
We did make some changes in an attempt to mitigate the issues - we increased the roof ridge heights and widened the dormers to allow people to walk around the bed, but it was hard going. We were effectively driving any improvements, and the design agency were acting as computer operators. When asking their opinion or making a suggestion the response was typically "what do you think?"
There were some changes we made that we were happy with - I've always liked a double height entrance space, so we removed the vestibule and added a void above the front door, we removed the back door from the kitchen in exchange for more sliding doors (although for some reason they were shown as bi-fold), and also made some other tweaks. This was the final set of designs we got from the design agency, in April 2016.
During those winter months, the builder also continued to work with structural engineers and the pipeline owner on getting approved foundation designs - that too was turning out to be a bit of a marathon that would rumble on for months to come.
With us changing the roof lines, we had to go back to planning, and were advised to go for a Non Material Variation, but Fife Council kicked that out and said we had to go back to full planning. £100 wasted there due to bad advice - we were later told it would never be accepted as a NVM due to the ridge height changes.
If we had gone ahead with that build, I think I would have been ok with the house, but we were not happy with compromises we were having to make due to the rooflines and definitely not happy with the service provided by the design agency. We felt like more could be done with the space we had, but were struggling to find a route to getting there.
By chance, we had tickets for the Homebuilding & Renovation Show in Glasgow in May 2016, and sat watching a talk on self-building. The talk was about why having your own brief was so important. Almost simultaneously, my wife and I looked at each other and both knew at that moment that we needed to pause and rethink our house design. We bought the plot with full planning and never even wrote our own brief.
Since we were already having to reapply for full planning, we decided we'd do it properly this time - it was time to find a new architect.
Reading the above, you'll notice that the timeline is quite stretched. While this was ongoing, we also had real life to contend wit:
- I was made redundant from my job in January 2016 due to a major restructuring in the American Software company I worked for. I was offered a role in the USA, but that did not work for us as my wife cares for her mother, so I had a period of time where my time was spent was on finding a new job.
- Alongside that, my wife's mother went through a period of bad health, with 4 hospital admissions between December 2015 and March 2016. She had very little time to give to the process.
During such times, you have to focus on the priorities in life and other things just have to be put on hold.
Next up: Selecting a new architect.
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